Watchman What of the Night

The burden of Dumah. He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the Night? Watchman, what of the night? (Isaiah 21:11)

Who is really watching? How shall we guard this treasured chance, this bejeweled moment of imminent possibility, God has given us to institute structural change in American and alter the destiny of our world? Where are the prophets and how are they heard? We are familiar with the pundits, the peddlers and the panderers. You know all the usual suspects on the right and the left whose message has been the same since we first heard them; who work the markets left and right, black and white, who’ve found their niche in the market and relentlessly ply their trade. What happens when what may have been prophetic has itself become commodified, in search of an opening to expand their share of the market…? Death by a thousand qualified adjustments, in an effort to conform to conventional expectations in order to be heard. Again, who is watching? Where are the watchmen?

I am troubled. A week ago this past Thursday, I watched as a press conference to deal with the critical issue of health care dissolved into a voyeuristic inquisition, and fishing expedition of the connection between the president-elect and an allegedly corrupt governor. The question occurred to me, while listening to CNN last Sunday morning and the press conference referred to above, who is going to hold the press accountable? Are we going to let them cheat us once again out of the change we voted for and so sorely need, by redirecting attention off of critical issues like health care into the rut of regional corruption? Suddenly one man’s corruption is more important than millions of Americans without health care. Is this coverage performed in the name of the people? This is past silly on the part of the press. It is clearly criminal. They are stealing valuable time from the public discussion about what really matters to discuss tangential issues and wildly speculative possibilities from the cozy comforts of secure employment with benefits and healthcare of their own. They are embezzling the hopes of millions at home and abroad by a slow drain on the focus and the inspiration for change.

Who gave them the right from this privileged position to take the sponge to the vital issues of the people and the poor? Who holds the press accountable? Who is watching them? They are perhaps the real elites, this self-elevated aristocracy of the third estate-or rather the mask they wear; the insulated high priesthood of the information age. Are we going to sit idly by and watch the self-appointed elites of the third estate pick our pockets and steal our agenda? This I am afraid is only the first of what will be a series of diversionary attempts to mire change in the drudge of conjured controversy. We must not let this be! Rise up and say clearly, “Not this time! Not now!”

A Friend of the Crucified,

Dr. Matthew V. Johnson Sr., Ph. D., National Executive Director

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Message from the National Director

Our excessively violent and punitive culture has created a toxic atmosphere that has poisoned every facet of our communal lives. The violence is not limited to American culture. It extends to religions, ethnicities and societies the world over. The toll in sheer human anguish; the cost in quality of life; the deepening of bitter hatreds and ethic hostilities extending the suffering indefinitely into future generations is a price far too high for us to pay and a burden shamelessly left our children to bear. There is simply too much weeping and wailing.

The state of American society and our world is an eloquent testimony to the Church’s failure of spiritual nerve, loss of hope and lack of firm moral direction. This is more dangerous now than at any other time in our history. The struggle to realize the Peaceable Kingdom and the Beloved Community is becoming increasingly tedious in an age of meticulously managed media and the orchestration of mass manipulation promoting the anti-values of materialism, militarism and American exceptionalism.

The great Christian orator, Dr. Gardner C. Taylor once asked, “How Shall They Preach?” Every Church A Peace Church must ask, “How Shall We Live?” We cannot prosper and we shall not survive unless we indeed stop this spiral downward toward complete moral and spiritual chaos with the Church sidelined, shamelessly silent and pathetically paralyzed. ECAPC is determined to share the philosophy and principles of nonviolence. It is our purpose to teach each church to practice peace and deepen its witness to the Kingdom of God. Peace is indissolubly linked to justice. Without justice the appearance of peace is a perversion of God’s Will.

“Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the Children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

God Bless America and Our world,
Rev. Matthew V. Johnson Sr., Ph.D.